Rastaman Vibration Tour


The Rastaman Vibration Tour was a concert tour organised to support the album Rastaman Vibration by Bob Marley & The Wailers.
The tour began at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, on 23 April 1976, and ended in Manchester, England, on 27 June 1976. On the tour's second leg Marley performed for the first time in continental Europe and premiered in Germany, Sweden, France and the Netherlands. After the tour Marley performed the Smile Jamaica Concert in his homeland Jamaica, after being shot a couple of days before.
The album Live At the Roxy was recorded during this tour, on 26 May.

Setlist

After the first third of the tour the setlists became more standardised and mostly looked like the following:
At the beginning of the tour, for example during the four shows at the Beacon Theater when Marley experimented and changed the setlist much more than later during the tour, a gospel-like medley of two Nyabinghi chants and a brief reggae riff had been performed at the beginning instead of "Trenchtown Rock". Since the Nyabinghi chants were very meditative and slow until it segued into the lively reggae riff, it was decided to replace the long medley by the classic and instantly-lively "Trenchtown Rock" to better catch the audience from the beginning, as seen during the Natty Dread Tour in 1975 where "Trenchtown Rock" was the opening song as well.
All songs from the Rastaman Vibration album had been performed at least once, except for "Who the Cap Fit" and "Cry To Me". There were also performances of an earlier song which is not featured on any of Marley's Island albums released at that time.
From show to show sometimes an additional song was edged in somewhere in the setlist, like "Slave Driver", "Johnny Was", "Night Shift", "Bend Down Low", "Crazy Baldhead" or "Jah Live". Live performances of each of these songs happened very rarely during the tour.

Tour dates